English language -- Dictionaries -- Humor; English language -- Semantics -- Humor; Vocabulary -- Humor
INDIGESTION, n. A disease which the patient and his friends frequently
mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of
mankind. As the simple Red Man of the western wild put it, with, it must
be confessed, a certain force: "Plenty well, no pray; big bellyache,
heap God."
INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman.
INEXPEDIENT, adj. Not calculated to advance one's interests.
INFANCY, n. The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth,
"Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon
afterward.
INFERÏÆ, [Latin.] n. Among the Greeks and Romans, sacrifices for
propitiation of the Dii Manes, or souls of dead heroes; for the pious
ancients could not invent enough gods to satisfy their spiritual needs,
and had to have a number of makeshift deities, or, as a sailor might
say, jury-gods, which they made out of the most unpromising materials.
It was while sacrificing a bullock to the spirit of Agamemnon that
Laiaides, a priest of Aulis, was favored with an audience of that
illustrious warrior's shade, who prophetically recounted to him the
birth of Christ and the triumph of Christianity, giving him also a
rapid but tolerably complete review of events down to the reign of
Saint Louis. The narrative ended abruptly at that point owing to the
inconsiderate crowing of a cock, which compelled the ghosted King of Men
to scamper back to Hades. There is a fine mediæval flavor to this story,
and as it has not been traced back further than Père Brateille, a pious
but obscure writer at the court of Saint Louis, we shall probably not
err on the side of presumption in considering it apocryphal, though
Monsignor Capels judgment of the matter might be different; and to that
I bow-wow.
INFIDEL, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian
religion; in Constantinople, one who does. (See Giaour.) A kind of
scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to,
divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs, voodoos,
presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbés, nuns, missionaries,
exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests, muezzins, brahmins,
medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders, primates, prebendaries,
pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries, clerks, vicars-choral,
archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres, abbotesses,
caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonzes, santons, beadsmen,
canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans, deans, subdeans, rural
deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons, hierarchs, class-leaders,
incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes,
gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons, reverences, revivalists,
cenobites^ perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices,
vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervises,
lecturers, churchwardens, cardinals, prioresses, suffragans, acolytes,
rectors, curés, sophis, muftis, and pumpums.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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